Byte Open at Combs SC

by John Saunders on 27 Jul 2013 The Combs Sailing Club Byte Open took place over the weekend 20th and 21st of July. The event began on Saturday morning with a training session where Rick Whitehouse, current National Champion, gave a short technical lecture about performance in general and the Byte in particular which was appreciated by all. This was followed by Louis Saunders, current Inland Champion, taking the Bytes onto the water for a practical training session. Every sailor who participated in this joint training felt that they had gained something from it, Louis from Rick and Rick from Louis!

After weeks of golden sunshine Saturday was perversely cloudy, quite a shock! Close racing was expected from this quality fleet particularly from club mates and friendly rivals Louis and Rick. When the 12 boats took to the water for the first race the wind was blowing a steady 10-12 mph if a little shifty, so not bad.

As the boats jockeyed for the start a few surprise gusts came through causing Sue Sloane to capsize but she was quick to recover and made it to the line. Combs veteran Harry Mayo was also involved in this melee sailing a Byte for the first time.

The start for race one was tight off the short line and the close pack of boats streaked away from the start. Suddenly Louis peeled away and made for the shore. The assembly holding all his minor control blocks had pulled away from the deck making the boat impossible to sail. Louis retired and Rick sailed to a win followed by Mike Radford and Eddie Pope.

Fellow club mate Sue Sloan was kind enough to lend Louis her boat for the next race and he quickly altered the controls to suit his more violent style of sailing. In race two Rick sailed impeccably and Louis sailing an unfamiliar boat was able to keep up but never close enough to mount a challenge. These two then finished first and second with Mike again in third.

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Combs Sailing Club

Overall

Sailed: 5, Discards: 1, To count: 4, To qualify: 1, Rating system: PY, Entries: 8, Scoring system: Combs 2013 System

Rank	Division	Class	SailNo	HelmName	CrewName	PY	Bt1a	Bt1b	Bt1c	Bt2a	Bt2b	Total	Nett
1st	Gold	BYTE CII	3301	R Whitehouse	Combs	1146	1.0	1.0	(7.0 DNC)	1.0	1.0	11.0	4.0
2nd	Gold	BYTE CII	626	L.Saunders	Combs	1146	(8.0 DNC)	2.0	1.0	2.0	2.0	15.0	7.0
3rd		BYTE CII	1465	M.Radford	W.Oxford	1146	2.0	(3.0)	2.0	3.0	3.0	13.0	10.0
4th		BYTE CII	3130	E.Pope	Ogston	1146	3.0	(4.0)	3.0	4.0	4.0	18.0	14.0
5th		BYTE CII	167	K.Moore	Weston	1146	4.0	5.0	4.0	(6.0)	6.0 DNF	25.0	19.0
6th		BYTE CII	1267	R.Moore	Weston	1146	5.0	(7.0 DNC)	5.0	5.0	6.0 DNF	28.0	21.0
7th		BYTE CII	1428	H.Bard	Marconi	1146	6.0	6.0	6.0	(7.0)	7.0 DNC	32.0	25.0
8th	Silver	BYTE CII	431	S Sloan	Combs	1146	7.0 DNF	7.0 DNC	7.0 DNC	(8.0 DNF)	7.0 DNC	36.0	28.0

http://www.combssailingclub.co.uk/pages/results/showresults.php?race=2013_28.html" target="_blank">Click here for full results